


Splinter

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a splinter from the floorboards buried deep in the heel of Cas's palm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Splinter

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Endverse.

It's a good salvage run, for once: they load the truck full of non-perishables, hygiene products, and clothes raided from the closets of abandoned homes, and weigh down the Jeep with a careful stack of sloshing fuel canisters. Cas lets Risa drive back to Chitaqua; while she spends the trip slanting him narrow glances and biting the insides of her cheeks, he rolls a scavenged bottle of expired narcotics slowly between his palms and stares out his window at the sky.

Back at the camp, there's sour smoke and bitter rye and Dean, Dean, Dean. "Fuck me," Cas says against the line of Dean's jaw, and follows it with a nip of teeth and a glassy grin. "Fuck me, Dean." Then he's laughing, low in his throat, and under his hands Dean tenses, wary. Cas presses his laughing mouth to Dean's and feels the give of his lips turn firm and frowning, so he sinks to his knees and splits his smile around Dean's cock. Dean does fuck him then, biting out frustrated-sounding syllables as he uses Cas's mouth.

By the time Cas shoves and stills and comes inside Dean, he's managed to forget what he'd found so funny.

When they're finished, they sprawl together, naked and mindless. The planks of the floor beneath Cas are uneven and dusty; the planks of the wall behind him are rough and cold; the solid stretch of Dean's back against his chest is damp and overwarm. Cas revels in tactility, in the conflicting sensations of his body as it clamours with satiation and complaint, everything so unstoppably involuntary and wonderfully distracting.

There's a splinter from the floorboards buried deep in the heel of his palm. He spends thoughtlessly painful minutes prying it free; when it finally slides out, a thick bead of blood wells up after it. "Here," Dean says, taking Cas's hand, and picks up the bottle of rye and wastes its dregs in perfunctory sterilisation.

Cas's breath whines out of him as the blood washes away. The wound stings ferociously, but it's not the pain that provoked him; pain has become his near-constant companion since he fell, and is no surprise at all. Nor is this even close to the first time he's bled. It's the realisation, belated and dull, of relation, of scope, of consequence. It hooks his attention and returns his reason, and he sighs, resigned. "Blood is so tidy."

Dean snorts. "You need to spend more time on laundry duty."

"It's sticky." Cas holds his hand extended, palm smeared red, like an article of evidence. He feels pedantic. "And it stains. But that's it. That's all blood does when it spills; even when it spills to excess. Blood spills, and humans die, and it's all very quiet. Barely even noticeable."

Dean has gone still. "Cas--"

"Grace, though." Cas lets his hand fall down to the dusty floor. He tips his head back against the cold wall. Dean is winding tight against him. "Grace makes a much bigger mess."

Risa had noticed the house on their way into the dead town: a seemingly sturdy brick box of a thing with one incongruous, collapsed corner. When their foraging brought them back to its street, she and Cas detached themselves from the group to investigate. They picked cautiously past a toppled mailbox and flattened fence almost lost in shaggy grass, through a long-overgrown garden, around the side of the house to where the wall gaped open, remnants of bricks and shingles and framing blown out onto the back lawn. "Looks like a bomb went off," Risa said, and until they could see inside the ruined building, Cas had no reason to disagree.

When he saw the decayed vessel and scorched print of wings--as individual among angels as fingerprints among humans--he couldn't even tell which of his siblings it had been.

"I'm going to die like a human," Cas muses, staring up at the ceiling, and Dean struggles to his feet and into his jeans and is still pulling on his shirt as he slams out the door.


End file.
